


Oh fleeting light

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, Friendship, M/M, Minor Character Death, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22793503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Dimitri and Felix have been together practically all their lives. Good times, bad times. Struggles and successes. But through it all, the other was always present, in one way or another.-When something happened for the first time for the pair of them, it tended to happen at sunset. It was something they noted only on reflection, really. Felix always told Dimitri that he was picking the moments out selectively, but Dimitri still insisted that it was important and poetic and they were all significant memories, so even if they weren’t the first- that wasn’t exactly the point.The point was that the first time they met was at sunset.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45
Collections: 2020 Dimilix Week





	Oh fleeting light

**Author's Note:**

> I technically wrote this for day one of Dimilix week (sunset, modern au, and firsts have all been used as prompts here) but it's like day five and ye. This shall be my only contribution to the week but I spent a lot of time on it and I hope you enjoy!

When something happened for the first time for the pair of them, it tended to happen at sunset. It was something they noted only on reflection, really. Felix always told Dimitri that he was picking the moments out selectively, but Dimitri still insisted that it was important and poetic and they were all significant memories, so even if they weren’t the first- that wasn’t exactly the point.

The point was that the first time they met was at sunset. It was a story that Rodrigue always told: baby Felix was barely a month old, Dimitri was approaching three months. It was Dimitri, actually, who’d been a sickly baby, and his family hadn’t wanted to take any risks. Rodrigue had understood, naturally.

But then, things moved rather suddenly. Felix was born and everything was fine, other than the fact that he was perhaps the spawn of the devil when it came to anyone in that house getting any sleep. And then his mother died.

Felix was a baby who cried. Rodrigue had gathered that much within the first few nights. But Felix cried like nothing else now his mother was gone. Glenn cried too. And Rodrigue? Well, Rodrigue was exhausted.

Lambert invited himself round more than anything. He called ahead, checked in early that afternoon, and came around in the evening. The sun was setting when Rodrigue opened the door, a fussing Felix in his arms. The orange light of the setting sun caught Dimitri’s first wisps of blond hair.

And Felix stopped crying.

The story, of course, was complete bullshit. Felix would maintain that there was no basis for a baby who had no concept of death and definitely didn’t have any idea of object permanence. He probably hadn’t even understood what was going on around him or who Dimitri was.

It was, frankly, a bunch of rubbish that his very sentimental father had come up with. But because he told it over and over, because it was something that he repeated with such fondness in his tone to literally everyone he ever spoke to about Felix and Dimitri, it stuck.

Ah well. There were probably worse stories that could be the default one told about him as a child. At least Dimitri thought it was cute, so it wasn’t all bad.

Maybe Felix also sort of liked the idea that even before he’d really known Dimitri, there was something about him that managed to make everything else fade into the background.

-

Felix may have been a baby (and a toddler, and a child, and a preteen, before that all ended very abruptly) who cried a lot, but one thing he didn’t really do was talk much. 

It wasn’t something anyone was particularly concerned about. He was an energetic and otherwise cheerful child, just very emotional and reserved in a way that set him apart. Speaking would, most likely, come with time. And if it didn’t, Rodrigue knew there were other options out there. It had all been discussed very thoroughly.

But other than that, Felix had been a very normal child. He had a normal schedule for a toddler who had a big brother and a best friend who lived over the road: every single day, either Dimitri came to their house or he went to Dimitri’s. They played together until the sun went down, at which point they separated for dinner.

That was, of course, when it happened. Because their lives together were a series of twilights, strung together in a soft golden light full of warmth and memories.

“Say bye to Dimitri, squidge,” Rodrigue had said, stooping down next to Felix in a half attempt to make eye contact. Felix knew, from later experience, that he’d probably stared at Rodrigue’s nose, or somewhere on his face that wasn’t his eyes (later on, he’d stare at his father’s moustache).

This was, again, an incident that Felix didn’t remember, but Rodrigue and Lambert liked to tell this story too. Apparently, everyone present had expected Felix to wave in response; that was what he normally did when asked to contribute in that kind of way.

Instead, Felix turned to Dimitri, shot him a smile, and said “bye bye Dima!”

Rodrigue and Lambert’s numerous retellings didn’t record a consistent ending to this story. Sometimes, they said that Dimitri had hugged him. At other times, it was Rodrigue who hugged him. Sometimes the ending would be posed that one of any of the other people around Felix had reacted with surprise, or that Felix had started crying. Or both.

In the end, Felix didn’t think it mattered all that much. It was another one of those sickeningly sweet stories that his father always described as something special, something incredibly meaningful. He thought it was logical that the person he saw every day who was about his age was the person he spoke to properly for the first time.

-

While Felix spent about half of his childhood crying (and the other half keeping people in bated breath over when he would cry next), he hadn’t tended to cry over anything related to Dimitri. Dimitri was never a surprise, never something that wasn’t constant. Because of that, things that Dimitri did couldn’t upset him.

That was, until he did.

It was sunset, of course. They were out in the woods together, and it was getting dark. They were meant to be playing hide and seek with Glenn and Ingrid and Sylvain and Miklan, but they’d hidden too well. They might have gone too far away. And now the sun was setting, the woods had gone very quiet, and it was starting to get a little cold.

Felix and Dimitri were both nine; Felix hadn’t quite outgrown the nickname Glenn had given him in his early years, but he was getting close. His cheeks weren’t quite so chubby anymore, and Dimitri was almost getting to the point where his hair would graduate from cute to babyish. It hadn’t done that quite yet, though.

The point was, neither of them were in any way old enough to be out in the woods on their own after dark. They weren’t entirely confident on how to get back on their own, but there was no one else in sight. They definitely couldn’t hear anyone rushing around anymore, like they’d been able to the first and second time Glenn had hurtled past their hiding spot.

“You don’t need to worry, squidge!” Dimitri said, his slightly gappy smile confident and bright. “I can get us back. I know the way, for sure. Just hold on to my hand and we won’t get lost, okay?”

Felix had nodded, his feelings running slightly too high for the words not to get caught in his throat. Dimitri was the one who’d been doing all the shouting, trying to find someone, anyone, who was still in the woods. He wondered where everyone had gone.

(He would later learn that Miklan had pushed Sylvain down into the barbed fence in the gap between the public woods and the private farmers’ lands. Glenn had been there to deal with the fallout, and in all the chaos they hadn’t had the time to find Felix and Dimitri.)

They walked slowly through the trees which all looked the same in the dim half light of evening, but they weren’t really getting anywhere. He wasn’t sure where he was going, and he didn’t think Dimitri was either. Finally, though, they reached the river. The one that Glenn always helped them cross, because while Sylvain had hit a growth spurt and was all legs now, Felix and Dimitri and Ingrid were still too small to jump on their own.

“How are we gonna cross?” Dimitri asked, looking at the river like it would answer him. In the tales, there was always some kind of spirit that had some kind of riddle to solve for a free crossing, but he didn’t think those things were actually real. He doubted one would come to them.

Felix shrugged, and then he saw the way Dimitri was looking at the river. Looking at him. Then, Felix shook his head. “What?” Dimitri asked. “I can definitely try jumping. Then maybe I can help you across?” Felix shook his head again. “It’s fine, squidge!” he said. He looked at the river, and then he dropped Felix’s hand.

He stepped back a few paces, and then a few paces more. “I’m going to run at it,” he said, “and then I’m going to jump. I bet it’s easy, we don’t need Glenn to do this!”

Felix shook his head fervently, but Dimitri ignored him. When he got ideas into his head, Dimitri was really bad at backing down, even if there was a good idea. Ingrid called it a ‘boy thing’, but Felix had never really known what she meant by that.

Dimitri ran, and he jumped. And then he hit the dirt on the other side of the river, but not on the bank. His arms scrabbled at the riverside, and then he slipped, scrabbled some more in the mud, and fell into the river.

That was the first time Felix cried over Dimitri. For just an instance, he forgot all about how Dimitri could swim, how Dimitri would actually be perfectly fine if his instincts just kicked in and let him move. It wasn’t hard to get to a bit where the bank was less steep. It wasn’t an unsolvable situation at all, and yet Felix panicked.

He cried, and he cried, and he cried, and Dimitri was perfectly fine long before he managed to calm himself down. He didn’t know what it was, what had upset him so, it was just that, if only for a moment, he had been petrified that Dimitri was going to die.

They got out of the forest in the end. They found a narrower part of the river and then backtracked, and then they managed to get back to the path that led them in. When they got out of the forest, Felix’s tears had dried, but he was still shaking. Dimitri held his hand all the way home, until the last rays of daylight vanished under the night sky.

-

When they were both eleven years old, Felix had outgrown the name of squidge. No one called him that anymore, and that was what the argument was over.

It was in winter, so the sun was setting as Dimitri and Felix walked home together. They were walking side by side like they always did, but Felix was annoyed. “Why do you have to keep calling me squidge?” he asked with a huff. “I don’t like it. It’s embarrassing.”

“But it’s what I’ve always called you,” Dimitri said. He didn’t look too worried, not really, but there was something about the whole thing that really got to Felix. People already made fun of him for being a crybaby. He didn’t need a name like a baby too.

“Well I don’t like it anymore,” he said. “It’s a silly name. Only Glenn used to call me that, it’s just that everyone copied him. Why do you even have to copy Glenn?”

“I just think he’s cool…” Dimitri said. “And it’s not really copying if you’ve been squidge the whole time I’ve known you! It’s just something that came from him the first time.”

The argument, which only wore on as the sun dipped lower, was not about Glenn. It wasn’t about the nickname, either. It was about Felix, whose stomach hurt. Dimitri, who had recently, for the first time in his life, overtaken Felix in height. It was about how Dimitri’s voice was lower now, and Felix’s didn’t even crackle.

It was about Dimitri, who had recently cut his hair short, and Felix, who still hadn’t because his father said that his hair was beautiful just the way it was. It was about how Dimitri felt like his friend was drawing further and further into himself and crying even more at all these things Dimitri didn’t understand. It was about all those things, and none of those things at the same time, because Felix was bad with words and Dimitri didn’t want to upset his best friend. “What do you want to call you instead, then?” Dimitri asked.

“I don’t know,” Felix snapped. “Maybe my name? I do have one, you know.”

“I know, Harrie-”

“I didn’t mean-” Felix snapped, and cut himself off. He made a sound of frustration that was too high, not right, never right, and sped up his pace. Dimitri matched him. Felix broke into a run. He was crying, again, like he always did when this kind of thing happened.

“Harriet, please!” Dimitri called. Felix didn’t stop. Dimitri ran after him. “I don’t understand. Why are you being like this all the time now? I don’t think I did anything wrong.”

Words caught in Felix’s throat, as they always did. He didn’t know what Dimitri was doing wrong at the time. He didn’t understand his own feelings.

Normally, it was dark by the time they got back to their houses just across the street from each other. This time, the sun’s light was still peeking through the clouds. The sun was still setting when Dimitri apologised for what he said, when Felix said he was sorry for getting mad at him. He restored Dimitri’s right to call him by that stupid, stupid nickname, because it turned out that it was better than his actual name.

The sun set on their first proper argument, and was still setting by the time they had their first proper apology.

-

It was small. He supposed it was innocuous, and some would call it silly. Some would argue that it was something that had already been done for him and Dimitri, and that definitely hadn’t happened for the first time at sunset (or maybe it had - just no one had actually noted it).

It was sunset when Dimitri said Felix’s name for the first time. It was barely a month after that first argument. There had been countless more since then; Felix had been at the end of his tether all day every day, knowing that something was wrong and being unable to put words to it. And Dimitri had been upset with both Felix and himself every day, because he knew that Felix was suffering but couldn’t say a word that didn’t make everything worse.

“I don’t want to be- I don’t-” Felix had been struggling to get the words out for over a week now. He trusted Dimitri with everything. He always had, and he’d thought at the time that he always would. But it was difficult to say. He’d already been crying for an hour, just trying to get the words out.

“It’s fine,” Dimitri said. “If you can’t say it, I don’t mind. Don’t force yourself.”

“I want to force myself,” Felix said, trying to keep himself from snapping. Mostly failing.

“Okay,” Dimitri said. “Then I’ll wait. Should I go and get us some water?”

They were upstairs in Dimitri’s bedroom. Felix had invited himself over in a way he hadn’t done for a while, and that was how Dimitri knew that he had to accept, even if he had a lot of homework to do and many reasons that Felix probably shouldn’t cry in his bedroom for an hour (the rest of the conversation would stay with them for the rest of their lives, the detention lasted only thirty minutes. Dimitri would never regret the trade off, even for a second).

Felix nodded. Dimitri went to get water. And when he returned, Felix spoke.

“Felix,” he said.

“Who?” Dimitri set two glasses of water slightly unsteadily down on the bedside table.

Felix shifted, awkward to the depths of his soul. He’d tried to calm himself as much as he could, but he was shaking. “Me,” he said. “I said I want- I don’t want- I- argh.”

“You’re Felix,” Dimitri said, his words half a statement, half a question. “Felix, and not anyone else?” Felix nodded. He took the glass of water. “Okay. Felix. It’s a bit more grown up than squidge.”

Felix cried. The bright orange light from the setting sun streamed in through Dimitri’s open window. Everything was right in the world, at least for now.

-

There were many, many things that happened between that happy first and the next thing that happened for the first time at a sunset, but none of them happened at the end of the day.

When Felix and Dimitri were thirteen, there was an...accident. Dimitri’s parents died. Glenn died. All three of them were confirmed dead between 5:04 and 5:37 in the morning of a cold spring day. The sun didn’t even come out for long enough to set.

Felix never heard exactly what happened from Dimitri; he didn’t ask, Dimitri didn’t want to tell. He heard plenty on the news. A huge targeted attack that wasn’t meant for any of them. Glenn was there as a trainee security guard, Dimitri was there for a summer job definitely influenced by nepotism. The target had been a foreign investor with his money in all the wrong places, and all the wrong people had been caught in the crossfire. The investor gave Dimitri an expensive bouquet of flowers to lay on his parents’ graves. Felix didn’t get anything.

The point wasn’t all of that, though. The point wasn’t that Dimitri’s parents were gone, or that Glenn was gone (except it really, really was).

The point was that the sun was setting when Dimitri and Felix argued about Felix’s dead older brother.

It was because they’d been out together all afternoon. Felix had been turned out of the house by his father, who had told him that under no circumstances was he allowed to mope all day today when Dimitri was also alone, moping. So they’d angrily come together at Rodrigue’s insistence and done absolutely nothing. They’d barely even talked.

Something had changed between them. Felix couldn’t work out what it was. Something that had always made Dimitri feel like an easy presence had vanished, and all his words coiled tight in his throat and instead he said things that he didn’t really mean. But he sort of meant them, he just felt other things. Except he wasn’t sure if he did.

And Dimitri...Dimitri was so sad. Dimitri spent all his nights awake, Felix knew, because Dimitri was staying with them for now, and he spent all of his nights awake too. And when they were together, Dimitri didn’t talk anymore. And when Rodrigue spoke to him he barely said anything either. He looked sad and tired and he wasn’t like the Dimitri that Felix knew. And it made him...angry.

Felix didn’t feel much other than anger anymore.

“I wish he hadn’t just turned us out of the house,” Felix said, furiously picking at the grass in the park they’d finally stopped to sit in. Dimitri had looked up at him when he started, but where he would have frowned before and made a gentle protest, he now said nothing. “Old man doesn’t know anything.”

“I think you should be kinder to your father,” Dimitri said after a moment. His voice was so much rougher now. Felix was almost jealous, and that made him angry too. He shouldn’t be jealous of Dimitri because Dimitri had lost even more than him. But it also made him angry that people always said he should think about Dimitri rather than telling him that he was allowed to be sad too. Everything made him so angry.

“Why?” Felix asked. “He’s deluded. He’s just saying things that he thinks makes everything better.” It just made it worse. It just made it hurt more, hearing his father say all those things about how Glenn was a hero and he was so proud of him and and and-

It made him so angry to hear it over and over. Glenn was dead. That was nothing to be proud of. Glenn was barely even an adult, let alone someone who should have died when the person who was probably actually quite sketchy and had probably killed a child once or twice was still alive. “He’s sad too,” Dimitri replied.

“I’m not sad,” Felix snapped. He was sad. “I’m angry that no one can see what happened, what it really means. Because it means nothing, nothing at all. He died for fucking nothing.”

Dimitri didn’t say anything in response. He didn’t reply when Felix suggested, as the sun was really starting to fade, that they should head back. He didn’t follow him. He came back, hours later, and he didn’t say anything. The next morning, he told Rodrigue (not Felix, never Felix) that he didn’t want to go to school. His father said that of course that was okay Dimitri, no worries, just go when you feel like it, and then sent Felix to school.

It wasn’t until sunset the next day that Felix realised that he’d actually really badly messed everything up. It made him angry, because he hadn’t been able to stop it, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

-

The sunlight looked more like blood when Felix saw a monster for the first time. It was an accident, he wasn’t even meant to have seen it. But Dimitri kept disappearing after school (they didn’t walk home together anymore; Dimitri practically sprinted back when the day was done and Felix always stayed as long as he could to avoid going home to see his father and Dimitri playing at being a real family), so one day Felix followed.

He didn’t know what he’d expected, exactly, but it really wasn’t that. He wasn’t expecting to see Dimitri, face covered, standing around with all those people who bullied Felix relentlessly during the day for all the things he couldn’t do that meant he didn’t measure up to their standards of what a real human being was. Hell, they made fun of Dimitri all the time too.

He caught sight of Dimitri standing there, intimidating people into hurrying past. Keeping people away from the park. He stayed as the sun painted the whole scene red, and Dimitri…

Dimitri saw him. Dimitri’s new friends saw him. He hesitated, and then. “Go away,” Dimitri said. “You shouldn’t be here.” The people around him jeered, their voices high and shrill and full of feelings Felix preferred to bury.

“Tell her, Mitri,” one of them called, and everyone else laughed like it was some supremely funny joke. Like Felix hadn’t heard it all a thousand times before.

“He doesn’t need to tell me anything,” Felix said with a shrug, and he turned to leave, pointedly avoiding even looking at Dimitri. “It wouldn’t matter anyway. He doesn’t mean anything to me.”

That was when it happened. One second, he was staring at the blood stained horizon. The next moment, the light was gone. In its place was Dimitri, looming over him. Pressing him up against the fence that enclosed the basketball court and holding him there with one forceful palm. “What was that?” he asked.

“I said,” Felix managed, though his heart was racing and Dimitri knew he didn’t like being touched. Dimitri knew he hated being trapped. Dimitri was looking at him like he didn’t even know him. “You don’t mean anything to me.”

Dimitri pressed closer. Felix wanted to yell, wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. The sound stuck in his throat. “That’s a lie,” he said. His voice was low and angry and dangerous and it screamed all the things that Dimitri’s voice never had before.

This couldn’t be Dimitri. That was the only option. It couldn’t, it couldn’t. The real Dimitri was far, far away from here. The real Dimitri was buried in the earth with Glenn.

The sun was setting, Dimitri was dead, and Felix didn’t remember what happened the rest of that evening. He just knew that, when everything was said and done, Dimitri’s knuckles were split and covered in blood when he returned very, very late that night.

-

Felix got in from his summer job at sunset on the evening that everything changed all over again. He was exhausted. He felt like if he stopped for more than a second, he’d pass out. The whole day had been full of people yelling at him, people telling him he wasn’t good enough. The day just got worse and worse, and it had started badly in the first place.

Felix saw Dimitri as he attempted to pull together some semblance of a meal with his two remaining brain cells. Dimitri was on his way out; he’d failed a couple of classes at the end of the year and was taking nighttime catch up sessions to graduate.

“Felix,” he said.

“Yeah?” He tried not to snap. He really did. He just failed, because Dimitri never failed to set him on edge now. It had been years since that single incident, and yet...Felix still had nightmares about that night. Still found himself holding his breath when Dimitri stood too close.

Dimitri paused for a long time. Uncomfortably long. Felix moved on to do something else; having a conversation with a walking corpse was pointless. “Don’t drink that coffee,” he said. “Caffeine makes you anxious.”

Felix’s eyes snapped up from the mug (something he’d decorated as a child - it had a picture of him and Glenn and Dimitri drawn on it in a way only a child could do) he was pouring the coffee into. “No it doesn’t.” It did.

“Felix,” he said. Again.

“What is it?” he asked. “Stop wasting my time. And stop telling me what to do.” It was par for the course for them. Dimitri did nothing in particular, Felix got angry. Felix felt bad, but never apologised.

Dimitri’s breathing faltered. “Felix, I-”

“Say what it is you want to say, damn it! Why are you even here?”

“How would you feel if I was dead?”

There was a part of Felix that told him to tell Dimitri that he’d died long ago. That the Dimitri standing here in front of him was not the boy he’d grown up with. But there was also another part that recognised what Dimitri was saying. Part of him that Felix had been ignoring all along. “I’d be angry,” he said simply.

Dimitri nodded. “It would be a bother for you,” he replied.

He supposed it would. But it would also be so, so much more than that. Felix glanced at the mug of coffee. He looked at Dimitri, who looked exhausted. He looked dead, even.

Glenn’s funeral had been closed casket. Dimitri’s would probably be the same.

The sun was casting an orange glow through the kitchen. Felix had been out since the early hours of the morning, and he wanted nothing more than to go to bed right now. “You’re going to your classes?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dimitri said. Felix wasn’t good at telling truth from lies, but when Dimitri said that…

“I’m coming with you.”

The warm evening light reflected off Dimitri’s eyes. Eyes that finally looked just the tiniest bit like the ones he’d grown up seeing. Maybe Dimitri wasn’t dead after all.

-

In the last few weeks before the rest of their lives, Felix felt he was in some kind of strange middle period. He’d finished up at his job (he would say he’d served his time, because it certainly felt a bit like that), Dimitri had finished (and, miraculously, passed) his summer classes. 

But if Felix were being honest with himself, Dimitri was part of the problem. The main contributor to his strange mood. Ever since that evening, now over a month ago, he and Dimitri had been…

Dimitri and Felix walked together to Dimitri’s classes. When he was done, Felix picked him up and they walked home again. They ate meals together. They talked late into the night, even when there was no real reason to. The hard topics were still out of reach, buried under years of barriers they’d put between each other, but the easy conversations were, well. Easy. Natural. They made Felix feel warm.

And yet, despite everything that had changed, Dimitri still hadn’t told him what was happening next. Maybe it worried Felix that he didn’t know what Dimitri was planning yet. Maybe he wasn’t ready for Dimitri to vanish out of his life when, really, he’d been there the whole time.

He didn’t want to get his hopes up, he supposed, now that Dimitri had passed his classes and was able to graduate. Felix knew that Dimitri’s track record with school was less than ideal, and he absolutely wouldn’t blame him for not following him to college. He’d never even think about expecting something like that from Dimitri.

So why did the thought of going alone fill him with dread?

It made Felix feel terrible. It made him feel awful when they were meant to be celebrating. When this was meant to be Dimitri’s night to do whatever he wanted, and Felix was just caught on loneliness that was yet to manifest.

That evening, they went to a restaurant. Dimitri couldn’t taste a thing (he hadn’t said anything, but Felix could tell; no one in their right mind would actually tell him that his cooking tasted good), but this had been one of his favourite restaurants as a child.

Dimitri would later say that firsts between them happened at sunset, but this one was slightly different. Rodrigue had excused himself briefly when their waiter came over, and he caught Felix briefly by surprise. Just for a moment, he stumbled over his words, staring down at his menu.

“No worries,” the waiter said with a laugh. “What do you think your girlfriend would like, sir?”

There wasn’t even time for the atmosphere to go icy before Dimitri’s voice sounded. “My best friend Felix is not my boyfriend,” he said, and Felix could hear the emphasis Dimitri put on his name. “He can order for himself. I’d like a mac and cheese, though, if you don’t mind.”

The waiter stuttered out a decidedly uncomfortable apology, acting like he’d just accidentally committed some grievous sin against Dimitri’s heterosexuality (the irony of the fact that Dimitri had been bullied for coming out on a near daily basis ever since he’d done so when he was twelve did not miss Felix).

Felix, on the other hand...normally, he was resigned to such an occurrence. It was happening less and less, but you still met the odd stranger in this small town who didn’t know him well enough to get it right. Yet, now, he felt...uncomfortable. When Dimitri had spoken, an uncomfortable twinge had settled in his heart. That was a feeling he very much did not want to unpack.

The meal was fun, but the whole time he sat there wondering what was going on. Why, when he was finally meant to be sorting things out with Dimitri, there was a whole host of other uncomfortable feelings he definitely didn’t want to address.

As they walked home, warm and full and smiling in a way only their family of three really could, the sun set. It cast a soft light over the pavement of the stupid, sleepy neighbourhood Felix would soon finally leave behind, and his pace slowed a little. Dimitri slowed to match him.

“Felix,” he said. He was wringing his hands. Felix stared until he realised, and Dimitri stopped, shooting him a small smile of thanks. “Can we talk about something? Just quickly.”

“We’re already talking about it, whatever it is,” he said. Dimitri managed a soft chuckle; he’d stopped taking Felix’s every harsh word as an insult. If he wasn’t careful, Dimitri might start laughing at his actual jabs.

“I suppose we are,” he said. “Well, I just wanted to say that this...wasn’t just a celebration of graduation. It’s also- well- I gave my future some thought.”

“And?”

“I’m coming to college with you this autumn.”

“Oh. Cool.” He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he was meant to say, how he was meant to feel. He didn’t know how to put that sudden rush of warmth and joy and excitement and relief and- oh.

The sun was setting, making Dimitri’s hair shine like gold, when Felix realised that maybe he was a tiny bit in love with his best friend.

-

It had been a warm day in central Fódlan. The whole afternoon had been full of classes, of people to meet, of places to go. It got pretty overwhelming, at times, but Felix knew it’d work out. He tended to adjust to things pretty decently when it came down to it.

And, as always, Dimitri was at his side, so things would probably be okay. That was how it had always happened before, so why not now?

Dimitri had always been there. From the very beginning. Through what Felix liked to think would be the worst years of his life, and what he definitely hoped would be the worst years of Dimitri’s. He didn’t think it could have gotten much worse, really, but what did he know? They were both barely eighteen.

And here they were. “It feels like the edge of the world, somehow,” Dimitri said, staring out over the valley below. The whole landscape was bathed in a soft pink light, the clouds barring the full extent of the sun’s rays.

“It’s certainly something,” Felix replied. He, as usual, didn’t know how to put words to the sight. There was something about sunsets that always scattered his words to the winds.

“This reminds me of when-”

“Don’t even start,” he said, and Dimitri chuckled. “It could remind you of any number of things. It reminds me of everything, and I’m not as sentimental as you.”

Dimitri did at least have the decency to look sheepish. “Fair enough,” he said. “Felix, can I- can I touch you for a moment?”

“Sure,” he said. Dimitri didn’t really need that kind of permission anymore; the rift between them that made every point of contact crackle with pain had been bridged with time. It was still nice to be asked.

Dimitri, to his surprise, took his hand. “I think I’m in love with you,” he said, his eyes firmly set on the landscape below them. Felix’s were too.

For a moment, he didn’t know what to say. He could barely even remember how to breathe, let alone think. But Dimitri’s thumb ghosted over his fingers, and he managed to ground himself. “I-I am too,” he said. “In love with you. I mean- yeah.”

Dimitri squeezed his hand, and Felix squeezed back before letting it drop. It took him a moment to work up the courage, but eventually he managed to lean over, raise himself onto his tiptoes, and press a small kiss to Dimitri’s lips. When it was returned, he let his eyes slip closed.

Sunsets marked most things in Felix’s life with Dimitri. They had represented so many things, both good and bad, but this time… 

The evening light vanished quickly, as it always did. But this time, the warmth remained.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :) I worked super hard on this so if you have any thoughts then please let me know! You can also follow me on twitter @samariumwriting


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